I prefer: http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Note that the current polls are biased toward Obama as they contain his post convention bump. McCain is likely to cancel that with a similar bump in the next polls.

Interestingly enough, it looks like Obama can win without Ohio or Florida. If Obama can just hold the smaller states of Iowa, Colorado, Nevado, and New Mexico (which Bush won in 2004), he will likely win. But McCain will definitely have to take both Ohio and Florida to win.

While the national polls are tight, and probably will remain so, I still think Obama could run away with the electoral votes. He's competitive in major Republican states like Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Those are as rural and white as you can get. That alone should be enough to scare McCain.

I think it's possible that Obama could sweep from Minnesota and Iowa all the way through the North East, including Indiana and Ohio. If that happened, it would be a humiliating loss for the Republicans. And if Obama took Florida... ouch.

But I wouldn't count McCain out. If he can win Ohio, Colorado, and New Mexico, he'll be very close.

Your mistake is summing up the two different (and complex) topics with a single word. For instance, you could say that Democrats are both pro-death (abortion) and pro-life (healthcare). Illogical!

Whether or not a person's opinions are contradicting depends on what he is basing them.

I would say it's the Democrats election to lose given Bush's unpopularity, but the long Democratic primaries made it clear how McCain should attack Obama or Clinton. Then it took the Clintons until the convention to properly endorse Obama. Had Obama or Clinton not run in the primaries, then the other would probably have a greater lead over McCain.

But any Presidential race without the President running has the potential to be close. That's just because you have perhaps 45% right and 45% left that are always going to vote the same way regardless of the candidates. And given the way the electoral college works, it always comes down to winning a few swing states.

I think the biggest key is voter turnout in the swing states... It's less about convincing people to vote for you than it is to convince people who would vote for you to actually vote.

South Dakota is split down the line, it is not a major Republican state.

I was watching Larry King still alive during the convention and what some of the liberal said on his show were amazing retarded. Every major election speech I have even seen, has the family of the candidate come up on stage if they are around for both Dems and Repubs. One female liberal said she was repulsed by how Palin trotted her family around on stage. One of the other guests suggested the job may be too big for a woman with young children. Talk like this only shows just how biased the main stream media really is. The main stream meida is blind in addition to being biased because they swear up and down they are being fair just like Dan Rather still insists that his documents against Bush are still real.

Most of you guys probably assume I am a republican but I am not. I use common sense and the data that is available to make my choice. If anyone cares to look at Obamas policies and has just the vaguest idea of how the world really works could not possibly support BO. The best way to help the poor is to have the economy do as great as possible. As the election gets closer and closer, more and more people begin to learn about both candidates. This is why the Dems are always ahead at the start since they sound great on the surface by buying votes with all kinds of giveaways. Once people realize that these free things are not free Dem support begins to fall away. This is just now beginning to happen for BO. The mega loss for BO is just beginning to form.

During the last 2 elections most of the poles said Gore was gonna win and yet he lost, all the poles said Kerry was gonna win and yet he lost. This time some of the poles say Obama is gonna win and it is still 2 months out. Put a fork in him because he is done.

"BUT HOW can someone be PRO- life AND PRO-GUN"

I look the more than scratches the surface will provide the answers for republicans. The Dems on the other hand truly demand conflicting positions on a regular basis.

"If Bush had a better rating, they may have tried to undo the 2 term limit like any good dictator would."

Foolish as usual.

"A creationist a heart beat away from the presidency?"

Palin has a good stance on this. She wants the local government to determine which one or if both creationism and Darwinism will be taught.

"Well, I was sort of hoping for a temporary reprieve. I think the problem with threads in which Frank becomes involved is that at least one person (myself, once) goes much too far with the opposing rhetoric and Frank responds in kind, making everyone look like they're being wholly unreasonable."

You are 100% correct. The only problem is that if someone slights me I am ten times better at it, so it is like poor Thomas Fjellstrom is bringing a paper clip to a gun fight. Thomas loves to light the flame and then complain about the very environment he created.

"Know whats funny? I started doing it because he was. I think its funny to Mock Frank. Normally I'd be 100% against it, even if a person doesn't hold my views, but Frank is just a character, like Colbert is. Might as well play along I say "

So you started it and you forgot, this is the Thomas I have come to know. I havent been on this site for almost a week and you have still been babbling because of your last verbal thrashing. My pimp hand is getting tired here.

We've already annointed him [Thomas F. Griffin] as your protege.

Now Obama is changing his position AGAIN: he's saying IF (wtf? if?) we're in a recession he won't repeal Bush's tax cuts. I haven't heard anything about the retro-active Energy tax/credit/vote purchase plan lately either.

He's changed his stance on Iran too (see the Oreilly interview clip from last week).

If Obama changes his postions much more he'll have to call himself a Republican.

Inconceivable!

Let's see, what will McCain do for us?
- Waste more time drilling for oil that won't change the price of gasoline.
- Continue to deny funding to innovations in alternative energy.
- Corporate tax breaks. Because he thinks trickle down economics actually work.
- Help lift environmental protections.

What about Obama?
- Invest in cleaner alternative energy infrastructure in the United States.
- Create more American jobs by investing in alternative energy sources.
- Work to make higher education and health care affordable for all Americans.

I don't see how anyone can call a decision like that a choice. Only one is remotely sane.

In regards to raising taxes in general, the Republicans always play the 'hero' of the middle class by lowering taxes and driving the country deeper into debt while they spend even more frivolously. This leaves the Democrats to be the ones to shoulder the responsibility of the debts they incur, along with making the Democrats the scape goats when they are forced to raise taxes to pay off the Republican's debts.

I think one of the main problems with the legislative branch of our government is the allowance of rider bills. These alone probably account for most of the wasteful spending in the government. When a spending bill is 1000 pages long, what's another couple pages that wastes a few million dollars here and there? And they get passed because if you want the majority of the good in the bill to pass, then you're stuck with accepting the collection of minor evils.

That's interesting because these are all policy initiatives McCain has cited as well.

1) So are you expecting Obama to replace all cars with electric/hybrid wonder machines that don't exist yet? And put in a Hydrogen infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles that also don't exist yet?

2) All these jobs will come from... building electric cars and hydrogen gas stations? Or solar and wind in the midwest and southwest respectively?

3) What drives the cost of Health care and higher education? Aren't you really saying you think Obama will get the government to pay for it all? Where do you suppose the money will come from?

These are sincere questions...

Dole beat Clinton in South Dakota. No Democrat has taken the state since 1964. That's the definition of a Republican state.

Palin has become very popular with conservatives. We'll see how it goes when she starts getting more face time in interviews and debates.

McCain is becoming quiet successful at co-opting Obama's 'Change' message. Say what you will, but he does have a legitimate history of pissing off Republican party leaders.

No, but when the government invests in dead-end energy sources like oil it hurts the country.

The investment will be in American businesses that produce alternative energy along with the equipment to produce it. When you can create more jobs in alternative energy equipment production and sales, along with investing in technical training for American workers to produce and maintain that equipment that's a good thing.

Drilling for more oil won't do squat to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but investing in alternative energy infrastructure will, along with creating more jobs.

Excuse you? McCain is the only one with the smile of a con man running for president. You should know by now I don't let anyone think for me. I don't trust McCain to have what's best in mind for all of the United States for even a second. He'll cater to big business at the expense of the environment and our country. He'll stifle innovation in favor of the status quo for the rich, and if he wins the seat of presidency our country will stagnate and fall behind even farther for another four years.

I trust that he'll put money into research, low interest startup loans to build infrastructure and retool car manufacturing plants, along with putting in the necessary infrastructure to support new energy sources.

A train won't do you any good if there's no track for it.

Demand for cleaner energy sources and means of travel is increasing around the world. If we can be the ones to provide it effectively, the jobs will be ours.

I suppose bureaucracy is a large part of it, but I don't know especially. Where will the money come from? I think some of it will be from repealing tax breaks for the wealthy, along with putting the burden of governing Iraq back into their own hands, relieving the costs due of major deployment.

With the wealth of information becoming available on the internet I would hope that the free information would help drive down the costs of education. I look at online schools from time to time but they're often as much as and sometimes more than comparable state universities. I think if disciplines were separated more between online schools rather than many disciplines together it could streamline things and provide higher quality training and less expensive certification.

Yes, I mispoke, shouldn't have included hybrids. So here is what I was getting at:

1) By simply stating that one candidate will invest in research and creating new cleaner infrastructure and that's a solution is naive. When you're talking about replacing $trillions$ in infrastructure, market forces have to do it. That means alternatives have to be cheap compared to oil. Yes, investment is needed, yes innovation is needed, but that's just the beginning. According to T Boone Pickens, it's a process.

2) About alternative energy creating jobs, again, market forces have to drive it

3) Making higher education affordable and then saying online learning will make education cheaper; um, what planet are you living on? There are a lot of people with a vested interest in keeping education sequestered and expensive (teachers unions, universities, administrators, text book publishers). Anyone can be a self directed learner but at the end of the day you still must have that peice of paper.

Sadly, from what I hear, I don't think either candidate has a better handle on the issues than those commonly presented here.

It's a shame that true conservatism seems to have died off in the US. It used to be that conservatives were all for smaller governments & lower taxes but somewhere along the way the GOP got all messed up and lost focus. The Bush administration is responsible for one of the biggest increases in government size, and in my opinion McCain doesn't seem to be talking alot of how he plans to change that.

I'm not saying Canada is any better. It looks like Mr. Harper has called another federal election. Thats like what, the second election in like 2 years? Those things are expensive! The cost of an election was shown to me not too long ago, I forget the figures exactly but man it was alot. Thats pure waste IMO. Canada should enact a system like the States, 4 year terms. That would give the people enough time to see if the government was doing it's job, and give the government enough time to enact some of things it promised. We also need to stop this 'voting for the party crap.' Voting for the leader is much better (once again, MO).